Author: Chunmei Fox
Published "Illustrated Traditional Chinese Costumes"
During the "May Day" holiday, I saw the news about #Travel blogger Mogao Grotto's video being reported#——
Watching the news, the blogger said that "filming is prohibited in the cave, I filmed two and was stopped, and I didn't continue filming in the follow-up", and the video he posted on the platform was also reported by netizens. It can be said that after years of publicity, the rule of prohibiting tourists from taking photos in the Mogao Grottoes is still well known to everyone, but it still attracts a lot of debate.
Many people feel that the Mogao Grottoes ban photography in order to force everyone to travel to the local area, which is an act of "learning the valve", and the purpose is to occupy for themselves——
Screenshots of comments under related news videos
Let's just say that the above behaviors may exist in some places, especially the behavior of treating information as seniority, not disclosing it without researching something, and we have criticized it many times, and it is really a bit unjust to buckle on the head of "Dunhuang".
Since the emergence of Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes in 1900, the "Dunhuang Studies" formed around the Dunhuang Grottoes and Dunhuang cultural relics has become an international prominent study, especially in the early stage of its development, the situation in the mainland is turbulent, and the large number of Dunhuang cultural relics have been lost, Dunhuang Studies has always been a leader overseas. After the founding of New China, mainland scholars began to sort out and rediscover Dunhuang documents, and also did a lot of protection, restoration and archaeological research around the Dunhuang Grottoes, so that the latecomers could prevail.
Dunhuang Grottoes are an academic hotspot that is stared at by scholars at home and abroad, and there is really something, and it is not a tourist identity that can be cracked.
Dunhuang's digitization work has always been very good (for relevant information, see
Grant | Digital Dunhuang (360 panorama + documentary + open class + database) via@ Lu Hunrong
"Digital Dunhuang" has always been well received and has a high definition, in contrast, the more revised the website of some national museums, the fewer cultural relics maps, and the more difficult it is to retrieve cultural relics materials. In general, I personally think that finding Dunhuang related materials can be regarded as the top convenience and speed.
Dunhuang-related database, source Dunhuang Academy
The related collation and publication work began very early, and different editions have been published in a variety of ways. You can say its books are expensive, but people really don't hide anyone. Whoever this is, including foreign countries. I have already said a similar atmosphere before, that is, I can't see the cooperation between mainland cultural and museum institutions and foreign countries, and if they cooperate, they are selling G and H traitors, and they are also pure and speechless. There is also the kind of watermark that sends a picture stored on the Internet like a fishing net, which is called afraid of foreign theft. People have more convenient cooperation channels, no need to pull from Weibo, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, don't worry about this.
But why the Mogao Grottoes are not allowed to take pictures is worth discussing, because to this day many people still believe that the reason for the ban is that the light affects the color of the mural. I don't quite know why this impression makes everyone so impressive, because I used to think so. The news quoted the travel blogger's rebuttal "If I stand 100 meters away, will it hurt to pull 15 times to take pictures" is also clearly in response to this impression.
In this regard, Zhihu answered @spiral truth As early as 2019, he quoted a news from the 2013 China News Agency, clearly mentioning that the main reason for the ban was actually "the small space in the grotto, there are many tourists every day, and taking photos and stopping may cause disorder." At the same time, tourists staying in the cave for a long time produce a large amount of carbon dioxide, humidity and temperature changes will exacerbate the 'decay' of the cave, and the pigment particles will dissolve and cause the mural picture to fall off."
Screenshots of related news
Regarding this non-flash explanation, there are also many people in this news commentary who are helping popularize science, which has led to other strange rebuttals -
Screenshots of comments under related news videos
Really don't use your own bar to challenge people's scientific protection, there are a lot of papers and experiments.
Before reasoning, we must first lay out the facts, that is, from the beginning of the establishment of the National Dunhuang Art Institute in 1944, the Dunhuang Grottoes guarded by Chang Shuhong and others were already a precarious and devastated Dunhuang Grottoes.
Group photo of all staff of the National Dunhuang Art Institute in 1944
In 1959, Chang Shuhong and colleagues from the Dunhuang Institute of Cultural Relics took a group photo in front of Cave 13 of the Tiantishan Grottoes
The Mogao Grottoes you see now, the exterior is very similar to the man-made scenic spot, because the appearance is really neat. The reason for this was that the cliff walls excavated by the Mogao Caves at that time had cracks and partial collapses, so they were reinforced with huge amounts of money under such difficult circumstances as in the early 60s of the last century.
Instructions of Premier Zhou Enlai on the Protection and Maintenance Project of the Mogao Grottoes (1962), Chronicle of the Sixty Years of Cultural Relics in Gansu
This is not a perfect reinforcement project (the reinforcement project of the Mogao Grottoes has been carried out for decades), not only the conditions at that time were really limited, but also because the ancients had exhausted the excavation of the cliff wall of the Mogao Grottoes to the point of exhaustion. Weighing the pros and cons, Liang Sicheng suggested that "our purpose is to protect what is inside the cave and reinforce it from the outside to protect it." But in fact, the final appearance is simple and generous, and a passable corridor has been built, you must know that before that, the Taoist lamas chiseled the rock wall with murals for the convenience of passage, and the conditions were very bad.
The appearance of the Mogao Grottoes is contrasted, and the source is surging
Old photo of the Mogao Grottoes reinforcement project, the source @ The broken thoughts of the old pig
Exterior view of Mogao Grottoes, source China Daily
For many people, the biggest problem that can be thought of in the Mogao Grottoes is probably that the murals have changed color. In fact, the mural can also "nail", that is, the pigment layer cracks, warps, peels.
Mural nail disease from "Risk Assessment Method for Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes Mural Based on Near-infrared Hyperspectral Technology"
Mural Painting, Silk Road Multimedia Series Resource Library
Mogao Grottoes 386 before the repair, Sichuan Daily
After the restoration of Cave 386 of Mogao Grottoes, Sichuan Daily
The murals can also be "crispy". Frescoes are generally three-tiered structures, their own supports, a floor layer smoothed with stucco, and a layer of paint for painting. The nail is mainly a problem of the pigment layer, and the alkali is crisped together with the ground layer, and a bad one is sprinkled down. It sounds scary, but it is indeed one of the main diseases of the Mogao cave paintings.
Gheeso
Mural Crisp, Silk Road Multimedia Series Resource Library
The cause of the alkali is generally believed to be that there are "soluble salts" in the mural, which will have two states: crystallization and dissolution, and soluble salts will run with the moisture. Wherever the moisture runs, it dissolves and crystallizes as the humidity changes. For the ground layer, it is constantly expanding and contracting, and then the entire structure loses its bonding effect on the pigment layer. It's like the shortbread you eat, lightly take a bite of the dregs full of clothes.
Soluble salt mechanism of action
Remember what the 2013 news said? "Tourists staying in the cave for a long time produce a lot of carbon dioxide, humidity and temperature changes will exacerbate the 'decay' of the cave, and the pigment particles will dissolve and cause the mural picture to fall off", which is said to be the disease of the alkali. Visitors not only bring high relative humidity to the cave, but also frequent fluctuations in relative humidity, which are the main causes of mural diseases. Is this an answer to a netizen's question, the difference between tourists staying in it and mobile tourists.
In May 1991, the Dunhuang Academy "cooperated with the Getty Conservation Institute of the United States to conduct an experiment on the environmental impact of the cave by the audience". emm... That is, 32 years ago, many of the "great smarts" involved in this discussion were probably not yet born. In the "Impact of Open House on the Microenvironment of Mogao Grottoes" published in 2017, the continuous detection cycle is as long as 10 years, and the data that a netizen wants is also available in this journal.
The mural diseases related to "soluble salts" are not only soda but also "empty drums", that is, the adhesion between the support layer and the ground layer is lost, and a gap appears, which then causes a large part of the mural to fall off.
Mural Empty Drum, Silk Road Multimedia Series Resource Library
These mural diseases are not caused by tourists, but also exist in some caves that are not open, after all, the Mogao Grottoes are more than a thousand years old from 366 AD, and it is necessary to face up to its many diseases. On the other hand, the activities of tourists, and the increasing number of tourists, are indeed increasing the difficulty of cave protection, which is also an objective reality.
But I think tourists do not need to bear too much psychological pressure, how to assess the risk of cave opening, choose the appropriate cave opening, how to measure the number of tourists that the cave can carry, adjust the number of tourists entering the cave, how to open and protect research at the same time, to achieve a win-win situation between the public and academic value, these are all carried out by specialized professionals. All we need to do is trust their profession, follow their rules, and occasionally find some of their research papers to study.
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Spring plum fox Traditional costume
The Tibetan fox with his face on the ground, so the costume enthusiast in the pile of paper